Week 1
22/09/08
Welcome Back
Back to University again after placement and it’s been difficult getting back into the swing of things. This is where all the real work starts. Talk of major projects in a fancy new lecture theatre at the art college can be daunting but on we go.....
This weeks lecture
This week in our first lecture Chris talked to us about what this year would entail and what is expected of us. We were shown the standard of the work from last year and from there I found myself thinking,
Could I have designed that or something better? To do well this year is going to take a lot of creativity and hard work. Let’s get cracking
Homework in week 1? So much for us students having an easy life. Chris set us the task of sending him a text file with a short biography about ourselves and 3 ideas for a major project. We also had to include 5 inspirational websites. We wrote it in Markdown, a text-to-html tool for web writers. I found finding ideas for my major project difficult this week. I can’t think of something that is fresh and will be bearable for the whole year. As I’ll be working on for so long it needs to something that I’m not going to hate by the end of it. Something I’m going to have to really focus on in the coming weeks.
Research
I did a lot of hunting on the web this week for sites that inspired me. I came across lots of well designed, websites that ‘worked’. It left me in awe of some of the things that can be made in flash and css. I know a lot of these sites had teams of designers working on them so it gives me a bit of reassurance that amazing sites aren’t all one man shows.
Some of the sites I liked this week because of their design or content:
Poking about...
I also took a look at pokelondon.com and hulger.com
I found the retro style of the Hulger phones pretty cool. They’re not for me really because I don’t use Skype and I think I’d get some funny looks walking through the university with one attached to my mobile. It would look like I was trying too hard. I could see them in lots of homes though if they were for landlines.
The Poke portfolio really inspired me this week. Its funny looking at some of their work thinking, ‘I’ve seen that advert on TV or on the internet and now I know who made it.’ A lot of their work is visually stunning. I’ll definitely be at the design week to hear from Nicolas Roope.
Major Project
Still struggling to come up with ideas for my major project. Hopefully over the next few weeks ill come up something.